Stratothrax
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Chapter 68
🕑 Added 2021-03-06 07:39:50 +0000 UTC“You're a... demon?” gravelled Rain, facing the red skinned girl who had named herself Erin.
Erin blew him a kiss. “Only the best kind.”
Belle was staring bug eyed at Rain, her body tense in a flighty animal panic, her knife clutched in both hands in a white knuckle death grip.
“You- you can speak!? No- it doesn't matter, that’s not just a d-demon, it’s-”
“It’s what?”
Belle swallowed, a shiver running up her body.
“It's a-...a S-S-Succubus.” Her voice was barely a whisper, every syllable a testament to her fear.
Rain blinked at her non-plussed. He had of course heard of demons. It just wasn’t something people tended to speak about in public, only ever in hushed tones and in private so he had never really gotten to hear the details. He knew demons were bad news, and nobody wanted to attract the attention of one. But this Succubus?
“I’m not familiar with that kind of demon.”
Belle’s eyes danced between Erin, a dangerous demon, and Rain, a hulking wolf monster, desperate mortal calculus happening in those snatched glances as she tried to figure a way out of her predicament.
“It- she- sh-she isn’t like other demons.”
“I appreciate the compliment,” said Erin with a wink.
“She- she gets stronger, by taking from levelers, by leeching the thing a leveler holds dearest and most sacred, she takes our levels! Becomes unstoppable! A demon like her gets a foothold and she can drain a town dry!”
Erin tilted her head, a locke of black hair falling across her face with the motion.
“Fairly accurate but it's not just levels, there's all kinds of delicious goodies inside you that you have no clue about.” She gestured broadly at the rows and rows of metal frames from which levelers were suspended. “Some things are easier to extract than others, of course I had a lot of help in putting this all together, those who summoned me felt that they should get the worth of what they accomplished. It didn't work out in their favour in the end though, past a certain point they simply broke to my will.”
Rain stared at her. This thing had been Lira the entire time? Working behind the scenes to leech of the underbelly of the town of Lynthia? Why had no one stopped her?
“Why didn't the town Ranker stop you? Surely he must have been aware something was happening?”
Erin put a finger to her lip and cupped her elbow, it was almost cute. “Hmm that is the question, isn't it? It does make one think, but then the ones who summoned me did have rather an easy time of it, making all these milking machines to feed and grow me, all that and they were left alone. Huh.”
Rain had surmised as much already. “The Ranker made this cult, he was the one who ordered you summoned.”
“You don't seem surprised?”
“Not in the slightest, if he saw value in it he would do anything.” Rain shook his head. “It doesn't matter, in fact if it hurts his ambitions that's just another reason for-”
“For?”
Rain rolled his claws, and found his lips drawing back in a snarl. “For me to destroy you.”
“Hah! Good one, but I’m afraid it’s far too late for that, it’s as I said, past a certain point it doesn't matter, I've drained so many people of all their juicy bits, I’m not just any old demon anymore, I’m more than that.”
She suddenly flicked her petite wings and Rain flinched back in surprise as the Succubus lunged toward him in a flicker of motion. Her hand whipped out and grabbed him by the shirt and hauled back. To his shock he was yanked down onto his knees, the power of her arm as unstoppable as a falling oak.
Instinctively he snapped at her, his teeth flashing forward to rip her face off, but before he could get within an inch she moved her free hand up and slapped it on his snout stopping his head in place, her arm and body swaying as she halted him in his tracks.
“No, silly,” she smiled that charming smile, “I’m the one who ‘eats’ you, not the other way around.”
An animalistic warning of danger sounded in Rain’s head. This thing in front of him was different than anything he had come across before, he needed to end this before things got out of control, if they hadn't already.
Without hesitation, he slapped his paws around her head. Due to the size of them her face disappeared behind his fur. Then he began to squeeze.
A muffled voice came from within. “Really now? It's not going to work. You’re so silly Rain.”
Rain snarled and actually put his strength behind it. He could hear a groaning sound and he realised after a moment it was the sound of the plates of Erin’s skull grinding together. Incredibly, the Succubus was holding up despite what he felt was force enough to crush stone. She was correct in that she was very very strong, he wondered just how many people the demon had drained.
There was a moment's pause and this time Erin’s voice sounded discomforted.
“That's… quite some strength you have there.”
“No, this is.” said Rain, massively increasing the pressure, his biceps bulging. Something made a cracking sound and he could feel the Succubus’s skull starting to slowly buckle despite her ridiculous toughness. The dome of her skull pressing inward, about to pop like a melon.
Before he could finish the job however the Succubus seemed to realise her arrogant blunder in allowing Rain to have his way and decided to correct her mistake.
Her hands moved in a blur.
Rain was launched backwards through the air, the breath knocked out of him. The astonishing power with which he had just been struck causing his rib cage to groan as he was sent tumbling over and over until he crashed into one of the milking frames, then through it and straight into the next and then the next, the metal crumpling under the impact of his weight, bending and breaking as he rolled. He came to a rest in a tangle of twisted metal and dry skeletal husks that had once been people.
Erin touched at her head carefully. A drop of blood rolled down her forehead between her horns and she caught it between index finger and thumb. She glared in Rain's direction.
“I do wonder now. A multi-evolver? Strange. Your soul and, hmm. You aren’t like other monsters Rain. I underestimated you. After all that I have absorbed and consumed and taken I didn't think it likely you could really harm me.”
The Succubus flapped her small wings and smoothly lifted up into the air, then as though alighting on a breeze she drifted over to the pile of black fur amongst broken metal spars that was Rain. She dropped down near him, her bare feet patting down on the stone.
She paused before she advanced on him and turned her head to the side.
“Your invisibility is really pretty bad by the way, did you think it couldn't be seen through by anyone with a little itty bit of talent?”
A blur stumbled against a frame in the dark of the room and then as her invisibility faltered Lyra appeared, one hand holding onto the metal to keep herself steady as her knees trembled out of control.
“If-If I wasn't so t-tired, yes, maybe, I- I d-don't know.” She spoke in a near whisper, her throat too tight from fear to speak aloud.
Erin flicked her finger at her and Lyra let out a shriek and stumbled backwards.
“Oh that wasn't anything,” she giggled, “Your reaction is pretty fun though. You have an interesting Class by the way, so don’t go anywhere, I'll be taking all of you in a little bit.”
“Y-you c-c-can tell wh-what Class I h-have?” said Lyra clutching at the frame for dear life.
“Clear as day!”
“Ooh! Do me! What am I like!”
She glanced over at Opal.
“Just a regular crappy Goblin.”
“Hey fuck you!”
Erin’s gaze dipped down to Opal’s hips.
“With three-”
“Sheepy! Now!”
The Succubus blinked and looked back at Lyra and found the sheep girl with her arm pulled back, a leather bag in her hand. Erin raised an eyebrow as Lyra cried out and heaved forward, whipping her arm around and throwing the bag as hard as she could at the Succubus.
“Money attack!”
Erin rolled her eyes and casually lifted her hand to catch the leather bag. Then her eyes widened slightly as the bag tumbled, the drawstring slipped open and a red scaled screaming face was visible for a fraction of a millisecond through the hole before the bag spun once more, the drawstring opened fully, and a solid geyser of gold exploded forth.
She froze up as the wall of money hit her and everything in sight was abruptly shiny reflective golden coins surrounding her on every side.
Then it passed and she was left blinking in confusion, coins clinking and rolling around her feet in a layer inches thick. One last particularly airborne coin bounced off her head before joining its brethren on the floor with a clatter.
“Did...Did you just throw money at me…?”
Her gaze moved down to the carpet of coin, her expression one of disbelief. There was gold everywhere, but there was also a column of black fur leading from the mangled wreckage of the milking machines and ending in a massive paw wrapped around her ankle.
She followed it to the source, the edge of the metal, and found a pair of yellow eyes looking up at her.
“Got you.”
Rain heaved and the Succubus was ripped off her feet with a yelp and dragged through the gold and into the wreckage against her will, kicking wildly. She grabbed at the metal trying to hold herself back, but the metal simply bent under the force of what was pulling her in, pulling her in toward a pair of jaws opening wide to bite down and rip and tear.
An expression that suggested a simple piece of math was quickly being worked through flashed across her face. If Rain was able to exert that much pressure with just his paws then how many times stronger would his jaws be? A predator’s jaws being able to exert the most force of any part of its body was an almost universal law, from canines to felines to reptiles. This, this was a problem.
She grabbed at his arm, clawing wildly, her fingers transforming from nails to thick black claws with a flicker of black flame, ripping at Rain’s flesh, digging chunks of fur free, but to no avail, Rain snarled savagely, an unstoppable inevitable force, and lunged for her.
The Succubus now hyper aware of just how dangerous Rain’s teeth were likely to be flapped her wings furiously. The room became a miniature hurricane as she put the full power of her demonic wings to use and Lyra and Opal were bowled over backwards by the wind alone. The Succubus twisted in Rain’s grip and just about managed to avoid his teeth which snapped together like a spring steel trap by her ribs. She swung for his head and with a crack of bone hitting fist her knuckles met the side of his muzzle, violently jerking his head to the side.
“Get off of me!”
Rain glared at her then spat blood.
“No.”
He lunged for her again, maw opening wide, but this time she was ready and kicked away, her wings flapping far harder, becoming a blur of motion. She lurched back from Rain under her own power until she ran out the length of his arm and momentarily jerked to a halt. This didn't slow her frantic flapping however, and Rain was forcibly dragged from the metal wreckage and up into the air, his entire huge mass dangling impossibly from the diminutive Succubus girl’s leg, somehow hanging suspended in the air with the sheer lift she could apply. Clearly her wings were far more than they appeared.
Rain’s feet dragged and scraped across the floor as the hurricane of air moved through the room, metal frames rocking and shifting across the ground in the gale force wind that sent ripples across his fur.
Not willing to let her escape Rain lunged for her other leg and to the Succubus's dismay managed to latch onto it leaving her unable to kick or even attack Rain in any way at all. Her legs were simply bound in his grip and he was too far down for her to reach with her claws.
She scowled, frustration clear in her expression. She was trapped by her own flight, not wanting to drop down to the ground and thereby allowing Rain to use his best weapon, his teeth, but unable to escape from his grip either.
She flapped harder than ever before and they began to ascend, quickly accelerating, she flew upward, each explosive beat of her wings thrusting her higher and higher into the air until with a cry of anger she smashed up against the angled tiled roof and then past as she ripped a hole with a swipe of her clawed hands. The cool night air washed down through the gap as the Succubus flapped through and rose ever higher.
She shouted down at Rain through the howling wind. “You want to play it this way? Fine! Let's see if you splash when you hit the cold hard ground!”
Rain climbed the Succubus as she rapidly flew skyward in a raging torrent of air, his paws wrapping around her knees and then her thighs, pulling himself higher, his claws indenting her flesh.
Erin snarled down at him, her face twisted in irritation, then genuine pain as Rain's teeth bit down on her shin, the pressure rapidly increasing until his teeth punctured her flesh and dug down, cutting deep into the bone. She was incredibly tough, tougher than anything Rain had ever bitten down on before, but his jaws were enormously strong, able to exert multiple times more pressure than his grip, and her flesh slowly split apart under his teeth.
The Succubus cried out, and then with a look of resolved determination, she stopped flapping her wings altogether. The howling wind dropped to dead silence.
Rain looked up in surprise, his teeth still around her leg, then he glanced down. Lynthia was just a few dots of light amongst the dark black expanse of the forest. They were very far above the ground.
Then they began to fall.
Like a lead brick.
A sense of panic filling him Rain ripped entirely through the Succubus’s leg dismembering her at the shin, her leg spun away into the darkness, vanishing from sight.
Erin’s bubbling laughter could be heard over the now redoubled howl of the wind as they fell like a tumbling red and black meteor toward the ground, a trail of blood left in their wake from her fresh stump.
Rain now realised the Succubus was suicidal, they were simply both going to die if they hit like this, resilient bodies or not.
Adrenaline taking over he clambered up her, grabbing at her hips and pulling himself up to face her. She smiled at him, the same charming smile as at the market, as though they weren't falling out of the sky to their deaths at all. This was the madness of a demon, he could see it in her eyes now, the light of insanity. Rain couldn't die here, not like this, he couldn't, he had too many people to kill.
He grabbed hold of the Succubus’s arms and flipped her around putting her below himself and facing ground below. Just in time as the tiled roofs of Lynthia were coming toward him at a terrifying rate, he could see all of the town, and then a fraction of a moment later the town filled his vision, and then all he could see was a fraction.
Rain held the Succubus out in front of him like a shield and they smashed into a sloped rooftop like a bomb. A geyser of shattered roof tiles going up around them as they glanced off the high angle and came down on the cobbled street below in a storm of broken ceramic.
Rain hit hard, Erin held out in front, and the ground cratered beneath them, the combined impact of the ground and Rain landing atop her crushed Erin.
She Broke.
The Succubus’s body became so much pulverised flesh and hundreds of crushed and shattered boney parts as Rain landed atop her. He rolled desperately, doing his utmost to mitigate the fall and absorb the momentum. It did not go well. He felt his ribs cave inwards, breaking like brittle spars as he hit. Both his shoulders dislocated, both humeruses ripping from his shoulder sockets as he tumbled like a rag doll across the ground, limbs flailing helplessly until he slammed up against a wall in a heap.
He blinked groggily and coughed up a wash of blood across his front and let out a long low groan of agony. He felt… brutalised, as was to be expected after quite literally falling out of the sky. Every breath was white hot pain, ever motion of his lungs grinding his shattered ribs together. His arms lay limp at his sides, any attempt at moving them sending lightning shooting up his shoulders.
This was going to take time to heal, and it was going to be a miserable experience. But at least he had survived. He had won, even.
His gaze slowly drifted up and he caught sight of the small crater his landing had caused. A flash of red caught his eye, the arm of the Succubus lying partially outside, snapped in so many places it was a disturbing zig zag of crimson.
What in gods name had been her intent? Were demon’s all this vindictive? Why do this?
Of course, a moment later, he knew. The sound of splintered bones crackling across each other came from the crater and the hand that was just visible slipped inside, the arm snaking amongst the rubble.
It only took a minute and Rain could do nothing but watch helplessly. The Succubus slowly, ever so slowly, rose. Her limbs straightened from obscene broken things, her bones pushing out against her flesh in tents of red, to then being merely fractured, and then appearing as normal. With a flash of black fire her stumped leg bulged out then surged down to form a fresh new leg, the sole of her new foot smoothly meeting the ground.
The Succubus’s head was hanging from her shoulders, literally resting on her chest, her spinal column clearly disconnected and her head hanging by a tube of flesh alone, but even as he watched her head slipped and pulled up, moving around of its own accord settling back into place.
Then Erin opened her eyes.
“Ow. You're a heavy one Rain, you need to think about going on a diet you know.”
Rain stared at the Succubus. She was as she was before, already fully healed, completely normal.
“Oh don't give me that look, is it really that hard to understand, with the numbers I’ve taken into me I can afford to burn a few.” She looked at him in a way that suggested she was seeing through him to somewhere else inside. “Especially for such a prize as you.”
She stepped up over the rim of the crater and casually skipped toward where Rain lay. He tried to move, he really did, but his mangled body refused to cooperate and he could only slump against the wall, helpless to do anything as she approached.
She stood between his legs, her hands on her hips as she smiled at his face, blood steadily falling from his muzzle in long stringy lines of red.
“All that fuss and you just became a little meal for little old me. Sorry Rain, it's better this way.”
Rain could only look at her. Her words echoed back to his death, she had said the same back then, a cruel mirror. The darkness in him festered, suffocating. It was happening again and there was nothing he could do to stop it. She had outplayed him completely, using her vastly superior healing to leave him crippled and herself able. It had been a simple yet extremely effective plan. Ruthless in its brilliance.
Her fingers touched up against his chin, she leaned in, closed her eyes, and then she kissed him.
Rain froze, he couldn't even blink, it was like fireworks were going off in his brain, making him lose control of his faculties. He trembled as she drew from him, took everything, drained him dry, his very soul pulling from his body, lifting away from his bones and subsuming into the Succubus until he was a withered husk, the thing that made monsters monsters taken and absorbed, sucked away and made a part of Erin, making her stronger, more powerful, Dominant.
Or that was what was supposed to happen.
The blissful expression on the Succubus’s face suddenly stilled and her eyes snapped open the moment Rain’s monstrous soul touched her, that hungry darkness just touching up against the demon’s core.
Then her skin began to boil.
Erin stumbled backwards with a scream, her skin sloughing from her body as though trying to pull away, ripples washing across her as her flesh seemed to physically revolt, quite literally trying to tear from her bones, as though every single last cell in her body was screaming to get away from the spot Rain’s soul had touched. And indeed as Rain watched the Succubus began to pull apart. Her bicep ripped from her arm with a flap of skin and went flailing into the air wriggling like some horrifying slug, she staggered nearly falling as the muscles in her legs tried to rip from her bones and flee, her skin splitting apart across her torso as her insides broke free, her organs and intestines poking out, evacuating.
“What, what’s happening to meeee?!”
She slapped her hand on her thigh and a black fire washed out from her palm forcing her thigh to return to its original shape, her muscle resisting as it was forced back into place. She desperately fought against her own anatomy, her hands dancing and black fire washing across her, beating her form back into place, imprisoning her own body.
He could only describe it as though every part of her was trying to individually escape of its own accord, like a fight or flight response taken to the extreme. She snatched a glance his way as she fought, and this time, for the first time, there was fear there, real unchecked fear, as though everything she knew to be true had just fallen apart in much the same way her body was attempting.
Still frantically slapping black flame, trying to keep herself whole, she turned and flapped her wings, once, twice, and then she was gone, disappearing into the night sky.
She was gone.
Rain gently laid his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.
Comments
Three what?
